I am deeply troubled by the Bush Administration’s new guidelines on how Pennsylvania and other states must implement the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP). Earlier this year, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services approved Pennsylvania’s efforts to increase children’s health care coverage. Now, six months later, it turns around and handcuffs the state from covering more kids. If implemented, thousands of children in Pennsylvania could lose health care coverage.

As the president knows, Congress is actively engaged in reauthorizing the SCHIP program with both the House and Senate having passed legislation to do so. Rather than joining us in the effort to ensure that every child has a healthy future, he stubbornly continues to push policies that would instead cut children from the health care rolls. I again call on the president to end the political gamesmanship with children’s health care coverage and work with Congress to solve the problem of providing nine million uninsured children with health care.